1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic camera having an automatic focusing (hereinafter referred to as AF) function and a white balance correcting function.
2. Description of Related Art
Heretofore, in an electronic camera arranged to pick up an image of an object by using an image sensor, such as a CCD, and to record the picked-up image on a recording medium, there has been known a technical method of, when correcting white balance (hereinafter referred to as WB), photographing a white sheet of paper or the like while framing it in the full range of a viewfinder field under a light source at the photographing place, and working a WB correction circuit during an ordinary photographing operation by using WB data obtained by photographing the white sheet of paper or the like.
While, in the above-mentioned method, it is necessary to photograph a white sheet of paper or the like so as to obtain WB data, a white sheet of paper having no contrast is an object that is very unsuitable for a focusing operation in respect of the AF function, which is widely employed in recent cameras. In particular, in a case where an AF mechanism is provided with a number of distance measuring points, such an action would be performed that, if a central distance measuring point has been judged to be unsuitable for the AF operation as the contrast thereof is low, the target for the AF operation shifts to another distance measuring point to repeat an AF computation, and, because the similar situation occurs also there, the target for the AF operation also shifts to a still another distance measuring point to repeat the AF computation. As a result, there occurs an inconvenience that the AF operation is not readily finished, causing a photographing operation to take a long time.